Shit TV: Australia 2006 "Midnight Zoo" first episode with Bajo
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- Опубліковано 31 тра 2023
- Anonymous executive from the Nine Network labelled the gambling content of this era 2006-2008 as "Shit TV". He was probably from the earlier times when networks were owner-operated and often proudly so, with billionaire owners crafting their own creation and consuming it too.
aus.tv.narkive.com/WfZ9RxBC/n...
Ten's "Up Late with Doglips", Nine's "Quizmania" and "The Mint", and Seven's "Midnight Zoo" all took their lead from the new UK format (Endemol again?) scraping the bottom of the barrel. Premium-rate phone calls were clearly left unanswered (but not without taking the $1+ fee) and often the callers that made it to air were pre-screened for incorrect answers. My theory was that if you called in, you should lie and tell the operator you were sure you knew the answer, then get to air and give the real answer. (Was this the ONLY reason so few calls made it to air?)
Australian TV has a proud live presentation culture, with a history of talent and talent scouting. The graphics, audio, studio and talent in these shows was a latent attempt at corralling the best of this tradition, and you can see the shows re-using a lot of the techniques and tools/library that were made for their flagship live shows of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. This incarnation on Seven (the only network making a profit) had the lowest budget, the lowest picture quality, the least furnished sets (if they even had sets) and the least clothing on hosts. Seven is loosely affiliated to ITV (and NBC), all of whom prefer mainstream-pop branding; it's also why they had shoot-and-protect 14:9 in the 2000s, which is so subtle you forget it's there today.
But together with the pervasive over-branding ("watermarking"), and the unscripted home-video aesthetic of reality shows, this moment marked a turning point in the dominance of TV networks in Australia. The rise in Channel BT was happening, with the streaming revolution less than a decade away. You could see it on the faces of the live talent - they were fresh recruits, struggling to hold up an entire television network on their shoulders, no multi-channels, LIVE TO AIR. All the while a skeleton staff at 1am was yelling new instructions while scrambling to collect thousands of dollars from bored viewers who didn't know UA-cam needed to be invented.
So big props to them all, and a special shoutout to Stephen "Bajo" O'Donnell who showed his mettle and proved he had the good spirits under stress (something to envy) that carried him into his breakout role in Good Game a year later - a hosting gig and a cult show rivalled only by Top Gear, if you subtract the motorsports and sexism and replace it with computer games.
*shame cube*
omigod Bajo hi 🥰🥰 I wish I’d been half as good as this when I went on Hard Quiz - shame cube indeed
just tell us the truth about the call screening - I uploaded it today because this Czech UA-camr asked everyone to email him about these shows ua-cam.com/video/QVlWch9LzY8/v-deo.html
Some say that she is still waiting for someone to call in and say "Embers" to this very day.
This is an August 2006 episode of the short-lived Australian game show "Midnight Zoo"; this show already ended on Seven Network. 🇦🇺 🇦🇺
Have a read of the description, it mentions this & plenty more
you mean best tv right? i loved watching these back in the day
I wish I knew what the night's income was for this, and how much the on-screen talent (and other staff) got out of it - it's never a big percent
I like the way Bajo begged for a moment of silence for "thinking time", in a way that brings to mind the scene from Police Academy when Commandant Lassard pauses a slideshow while receiving a BJ.
Wasn’t it called “Up Late with Hotdogs”?
Yes, Hotdogs, plural. Despite it being the nickname of a single person, Big Brother contestant, Simon Deering.
jokes! lol
There were similar late night phone-in quiz shows on each of the networks. Channel 7 had Midnight Zoo. Channel 9 had some show with Nikki Osbourne. Channel 10 had Hot Dogs.
I remember this crap! And 7 HD was only 576p
Right??? It was widely criticised at the time, with press releases that bizarrely tried to justify it. The lies were covering up an attempt to promote multichannelling as a business model, an open secret that Seven wanted to compete (on what some like me, and the other commercial networks) saw as a race to the bottom - Seven even went further in its earliest proposals, wanting to encrypt certain channels on the public airwaves to generate pay-TV revenue. This was all tried in the UK (where they were still rebounding from decades earlier, of having only 2 or 3 channels for the longest time) and with the best of intentions and efforts, all failed. They now have inevitably made the transition to HD, but unlike Australia, had to restart a second round of simulcasting (like the analog-to-digital transition years) that seems to be lasting to the rest of the 2020s. At least in Australia, Seven (and ABC and SBS, who were convinced into joining in the wink-wink-lie) were able to switch to 1080i on the same spectrum & frequency resources, and are slowly migrating to newer codecs and higher resolutions without having to set up new transmitters all over again.
He hasn't changed a bit
Bajo and Rove both have that "take him home to meet my mother" good vibe
Mel Gibson on this day: web.archive.org/web/20130625022946/www.today.com/id/14135592